


Chance Encounters

by elisi, redjaded (timeheist)



Series: The Redjay [16]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-05-05 19:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5387369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisi/pseuds/elisi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeheist/pseuds/redjaded
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first step in the plan was to lie low for a little, and stay out of sight. Of course, trouble had a way of finding Roda...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Immortals 1/4

**Author's Note:**

> This is a series of short stories, probably 3 chapters for each, with minor details about what Roda gets up to immediately following the events of 'The Death and Life of Rodageitmososa'. These take place during Roda's 8th regeneration.

“Never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention. ”  
**― Peter S. Beagle, _The Last Unicorn_**

*******

**CITIZEN PARK - THE BOESHANE PENINSULA, 51ST CENTURY**

_2 MONTHS AFTER DEATH…_

It was a bright and sunny day in the Boeshane Peninsula, and the Bank of the Colonies had just been robbed.

In a couple of hours time the press would call it “the worst breach of security since the founding of the colonies” and the Time Agency would call it “a temporal felony that threatened the difficult treaty between the Celestial Intervention Agency and us” but right now, at this very moment, no one had any idea what had just happened. Bank employees were still at their desks, making transactions, security guards were still at their posts, and the Time Agency's finest were occupied elsewhere-and-when. Life carried on regardless in the 51st century.

On the other side of the planet, Rodageitmososa rolled over, sprawled against the rising and falling chest of his lover, and checked his watch. The dimly flickering laptop screen on the table beside him illuminated them both, quietly turning itself off. Roda's free hand clutched a data stick against his rapidly beating hearts as he glanced at his bed partner, wondering if the noise of the machine had woken him up. But the scruffy blond was still sleeping like a log; admittedly, a heavily drugged log, who would almost certainly sleep for another couple of hours before waking up with what he would put down to a terrible, what-did-I-take-last-night? hangover and an empty bed. With any luck, he'd slept through everything Roda had done in the last hour and would never realise just who he'd shagged senseless the night before. Or if he did, he'd kept his mouth shut; he'd not said anything the last time they'd met this way and so long as this part of Roda's timeline remained unsullied then the first step of his plan would go without a hitch.

“Redjay, one, Gallifrey, nil.”

Taking in the Time Agent's naked form one last time with an appreciative sigh, Roda bit down a pang of longing. John Hart – or Will Wolfram as he'd called himself, when they first met – all psychopathic tendencies aside, was damned good in bed but he wasn't the Time Agent that Roda _wanted_. Not the one he would have liked to have been under earlier that night, moaning and grasping at the sheets as he had his way with him. But Jack was centuries and light years away. What would he say if he knew what Roda was up to now? That Roda was still alive, had lied to him, lied to so many people? That he might not make it out of all this alive to apologise? Shaking his head, Roda tried to push the thought to the back of his mind as his hearts ached. He'd given up a lot of things to do... whatever he was doing. He only hoped that it was worth it, in the end. It had to be, if losing Jack, losing them all, was the price.

Roda swung his legs over the side of the bed, shaking those thoughts out of his head. This was supposed to be a victory, wasn't it? As he stood up his heels brushed against the bag he'd haphazardly tossed under the bed the night before, arms wrapped around John. He crouched down, pulling it back towards him with one hand while scratching his jaw with the other. There wasn't much inside; a change of clothes, some threadbare red feathers, a dog-eared copy of some terrible novel he'd picked up out of boredom the day before. Turning the book over in his hands, he smirked at the title. _Sleeping Beauty._ He left it on the pillow beside John, a little something to remember Roda by, and started to get dressed. Bare toes wriggled against the cold wooden ground of the cheap motel room and he sat down on the bed again as soon as he could, scowling at his feet. Somehow it hadn't seemed so cold when he'd gotten into bed, but he supposed he'd been rather preoccupied with John.

The, uh, with the plan.

He thumbed the button on his trousers into place as he held the data stick up in front of his face, studying it intently. It didn't look like much, just a little piece of plastic with a motherboard inside but this little beauty was going to bring down a government and more importantly, it was going to be the death of Roda. In just under six hours a young Time Lady was going to land in Citizen Park with a smile on her face. She was going to siphon some fuel for her TARDIS, get a bite to eat, and maybe find out what the big deal was about 51st century near-humans. (Were they really as good in bed as everyone had said? Well, that was going to be an education _eventually_.) She'd be there for an hour, maybe two at the most, and then she'd be on her way to the next 'big adventure' that a TARDIS license with the ink barely dried led her to. Or at least, that's what she thought was going to happen. The Time Agency was going to have other ideas. After all, hadn't she just broken into the Bank of the Colonies? An anonymous tip had told them where they'd find their eight billion missing credits... and if she wouldn't talk, they had ways to make sure she did.

Roda cringed, one hand ghosting to his shoulder. Even seven regenerations on – and _Rassilon's balls_ , but he had had far worse deaths since then – he still felt the phantom pains from being shot. It hadn't been the wound so much as it had the shock of it all; at the ripe young age of barely two hundred she'd assumed that she was invincible. Of course, that had all come crashing down around her pretty quickly after being tortured for information she didn't have, and by the time that her trial came around and she'd been exiled from Gallifrey Roda had become pretty jaded about life in general. After all if her life was going to be ruined by all these crimes she hadn't committed, then she might as well stop trying to play the good little Time Lady and just do whatever the Skaro she liked.

“And to think all this time, I was framing myself...”

Chuckling darkly under his breath Roda swept the laptop off the table and into the bag, throwing it over his shoulder and standing up in one smooth movement. He grunted as it bounced against his back, watching John roll over and nuzzle into the pillow. There it was again, that twinge of guilt; would stealing the data stick from John catch up to him, too? Then again, if he hadn't stolen it in the first place… Roda shook his head. There wasn’t time for things like _guilt_. This regeneration didn’t have time to feel _guilty_. There was far too much work to be done, too much crime to be committed, and this regeneration could feel guilty when it was all over, or when they were dead.

Whichever came first. Forcing himself not to look back Roda crouched down to pick up John’s discarded clothes, rifling through his pocket for… ah, there they were. He shoved the gold shirt and trousers under one arm and flexed the handcuffs with a cheeky smirk. Whatever it was John had taken last night before Roda had showed up had done _wonders_ in bed but had knocked the Time Agent right out when the fun was over. With a little luck and a lot of sleight of hand, Roda managed to manhandle John’s hands to one side of the headboard and cuff him into place, just in case he woke up too soon. He’d wake up in the morning thinking Roda was a kinky bastard and hopefully by the time he realised just what else was missing other than his pride Roda would be long gone, planets and years away. He would lie low for a little bit, Roda decided. Set the TARDIS to take him somewhere he’d never been before and check on his plan later; it didn’t really matter when ‘later today’ was so long as Roda returned to the Peninsula on the right date, and the day you died was never going to be one you’d forget. None of the days that you died, for that matter.

Fully dressed, Roda reached for the rest of his belongings, tightening the bracelet around his wrist as he did so. It was a simple leather design, brown, but made for a smaller wrist and so it had come loose in the middle of wrestling John. Roda tugged at it with forefinger and thumb and teeth until the disguised perception filter was snug against his skin once again, and after a moment trying to remember which of the two was his buckled the _correct_ vortex manipulator onto his wrist on top of it. He really was a bit of a kleptomaniac this time around, Roda realised. The Seeker’s bracelet, Jack’s vortex manipulator (both would have found alternatives, he was sure, although Roda hoped that the vortex manipulator disappearance hadn’t tipped either of them off about Roda’s continued survival), and now, as he shrugged it over his shoulders, John’s beautiful jacket. Well at least two out of three of his thefts were functional. Oh, and then there was the data stick… he’d have to throw that into the Medusa Cascade on the way.

Littering. What a strange crime to add to his list.

His revolver he shoved into the waistband of his trousers as he began to studiously fold the remainder of John’s clothes, as quietly as he could, and place them on the end of the bed. He’d already input the coordinates for his TARDIS into the vortex manipulator - it was a brilliant plan B for those days where everything-went-wrong and Roda almost wished he’d hunted one down before - and it only took a few seconds more for him to flip it open, press a few buttons, and materialise inside his somewhat disgruntled TARDIS before he got too sentimental. Roda patted the glass console-top with a murmur of greeting, well aware that his TARDIS wasn’t going to be entirely happy with him for a good while to come; the TARDIS missed Jack as much as Roda did, and was equally uncomfortable about deceiving the Seeker. And then there was the minor detail of just what Roda was doing, which the TARDIS didn’t agree with at _all_.

On the other hand, it was so relieved Roda was alive that it couldn’t bring itself to sulk too much, and it only took a little bit of coaxing for Roda to pilot it into the Vortex before sinking into the captain’s chair with a quiet sigh. Yes, Roda needed a little time to himself, a little time to switch off. He kicked his feet up onto the console - ignoring the whirr of resignation that came from his TARDIS - and flexed his agile fingers until they cracked. But just where to go? It had to be somewhere that he’d not been before, somewhere that no one might think to look for him, if they had any suspicion he was alive. The thought brought a pang of pain to both his hearts, but he did his best to bite it down and stow it tightly in the box he’d built within himself. He’d brought this loneliness on himself, had he not? Self-exile for the Exile… it would have been poetic, were it not so bittersweet.

“Where to, _mon amie_ Take me where I need to go.”

The TARDIS didn’t need asking twice.


	2. Immortals 2/4

**TALAVERA de la RAINA - SPAIN, 1809**

Roda was sure his TARDIS thought it was being very clever, pulling a Doctor on him, but he was going to give it a piece of his mind later on. Later on, of course, because the most pressing detail of landing your TARDIS in the middle of a Napoleonic cannonade was, in fact, finding yourself landed unexpectedly in the middle of a Napoleonic cannonade.

Just what it was that the TARDIS wanted him to see or do, Roda wasn’t entirely sure. He’d stuck his head out of the door of his TARDIS, narrowly avoided taking a cannon to the face, and then turned his shields up to maximum strength and used every swear word that he knew. Roda _hated_ wars; if the Time War had left him with nothing else, it was the trauma of survivor’s guilt. She had lived with it every day of her continued life and he would continue to live with it for all the stolen days of his. Roda’s fists clenched at his side, and he was barely aware that he had drawn his revolver once again until it clattered to the ground and the colour rushed back to this knuckles. Picking up his weapon, he sat down at the console once again, reaching out to swing a succession of monitors into view, bringing up a 360° panorama of the battlefield, as it were.

As his heartbeat slowed to a more reasonable pace, he realised he wasn’t quite as vulnerable as he’d first thought. The TARDIS had parked itself in a copse of trees beside whatever town this was, at least a couple of metres out of the way of anything but the stray-est of stray of cannons. The shields were up now, and TARDIS had materialised as just another tree which - on the assumption that the French, the Spanish and the English were too busy trying to kill each other to notice anything amiss - probably meant that nobody knew they were there. Absentmindedly, Roda checked how many bullets were left in his revolver, as though it would be any use in the middle of cannon fire. He checked the date once again, trying to remember what he could of Sol-3 history. This was - what, the Peninsular War? John’s jacket would fit in nicely, then, but surely that wasn’t why the TARDIS had brought him here?

He tried to decide what he was supposed to do. Was this the TARDIS’ idea of reminding him he was in the doghouse, or was there something more important going on? The height of the Peninsular War wasn’t exactly his idea of a bit of calm before the storm and after more than a century together, his TARDIS had to have known that. It wasn’t exactly a complicated battle The TARDIS helpfully brought up what information it had on the Battle of Talavera. 55,000 British and Spanish troops against 46,000 French. The battle had lasted three days, ending in a cannon duel during which the French retired and the English commander was ennobled for his action. It was raining, outside the TARDIS, and the ground was slushy with mud and Rassilon-only-knew what else, but it didn’t seem to be dark out, quite yet. The War would be over in three years; the battle in perhaps a couple of hours. Even Roda knew better than to interfere in something like this. No, he’d just sit this out until dawn, find out what the TARDIS wanted him to know and then get the _Skaro_ out of dodg-

The TARDIS door slamming open was even more of a surprise. Roda raised his revolver, one-handed, without a moment’s hesitation, free arm groping for the TARDIS controls.

The soldier standing in front of Roda froze in shock, his hand still on the TARDIS door. Roda narrowed his eyes, cursing his stupidity in not locking the door behind him. The young man was, if Roda’s memory served, an English foot soldier, dressed in a a dirt-encased redcoat and a pair of trousers that had once been white. He wore a holster strapped criss-cross over his chest and a backpack that seemed to dwarf him, but seemed to have lost that ridiculous hat the rest of the English army seemed to be wearing, behind all the cannon smoke. Roda hadn’t failed to notice that there was a rifle pointed at his face, the bayonet glinting uncomfortably in the dim red-light of his console room, and his expression hardened into a scowl. He clicked the safety off his revolver. There were five shots left; he really didn’t want to have to use them on some soldier who’d had the misfortune to stumble into his TARDIS in the middle of a cannonade. But if he just dematerialised the TARDIS around him, he’d be leaving the soldier to die all the same and that, he couldn’t do.

“Damn it, Doctor, this is hardly the time for you to-”

Roda blinked. _Doctor_? Just what did the TARDIS think it was doing?! Not only was this a sorry excuse for a holiday, but it was also a pretty poor way to keep up the illusion of Rodageitmososa, the Redjay, being _dead_. Fingers working on muscle memory Roda began typing coordinates into the TARDIS ever more quickly, consequences be damned. He’d just have to drop the soldier off somewhere later on with a memory wipe… if he didn’t get shot first. (Roda had been shot more times than he cared to say, and would probably be shot again, but that didn’t mean he’d ever enjoy the experience. Well. There was a bit of a thrill to it, if he was brutally honest with himself, but it died down as soon as the pain sank in and stabbing, he had recently discovered, was far, _far_ worse.) Although if this soldier somehow knew the Doctor he would either be less trigger-happy, or more so. It depended what conclusion this one jumped to. The Doctor brought out… something in people, and Roda had never figured out what.

“Doctor _Who_?”

“Who are you?” Glowered the soldier, who - Roda realised with a start - really was rather short. And his voice most definitely hadn’t sounded that practiced-ly masculine before, either. (And Roda would know; he’d practiced.) “What have you done with the Doctor?”

“You’re… you’re standing in a _tree_.” Roda put as much menace as he could into his voice, dark curls bouncing as he shook his head. “Doesn’t that surprise you at all?” He paused. “...and I’m asking the questions here.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes I - look,” Roda studied the stranger down the barrel of her revolver, before lowering it with a sigh. The safety remained off. “Who the Skaro are you? Time Lord?” He narrowed his eyes, tilting his head to one side. No, he didn’t feel like a Time Lord. Didn’t look like one, either, at least no self-respecting one - which Roda had been told several times he was not. He made sure to keep Jack’s vortex manipulator behind his back as he tried: “Time _Agent_?”

“Hardly.” The soldier sniffed, turning his nose up and after a short pause, lowering his rifle in turn. He looked Roda up and down with a critical look on his face, and folded his arms across his chest. Roda could have _sworn_ his lips turned up with an appreciative smile, just for a second, but he shook his head. No, a few hundred years living with Jack had _certainly_ had an effect on this regeneration ego and sex drive. “And anyway, you’re the one in a spaceship wearing a phoney redcoat’s uniform.”

Roda raised an eyebrow, opened his mouth to argue, and then glanced down at John’s jacket once again. Yes, he supposed it wasn’t exactly a perfect replica, but then whatever time John had taken it from, it was unlikely to be the real deal. Roda hadn’t expected to ever have it put to the test; he’d just picked it up because it looked good and reminded him of last night. (Well, three hours ago.) 

“...it’s a perfectly good jacket.”

“Are you a Frog?”

“A -” Roda’s other eyebrow rose to join the second and for once, he was lost for words. “What?”

“A French spy.”

The stranger shot Roda a confused look, clearly trying to figure out how a man in a fake uniform, the Doctor and the French army all tied together. Roda started to chuckle before he could stop himself. Everything about the situation was ridiculous. A chuckle turned into a laugh, which in turn had Roda clutching his side with one arm and gripping the edge of the console with the other, unable to stop. He hadn’t laughed, he realised with a start, since the Seeker had brought him back to life. There’d been nothing to laugh about. He’d smiled of course - when he’d stolen the data stick, he’d smiled, and when John had put his fingers right there, he’d smiled - but he hadn’t laughed. It felt oddly out of place for this body, but not unpleasant, and the only thing that finally shook Roda from his uncontrollable amusement was the soldier clearing his throat.

Leaning back on the console with both hands behind him, Roda caught his breath, shot the soldier a genuine smile, and shook his head slowly.

“ _Je ne suis pas Français._ ” He raised a hand, silencing the soldier before he could say anything else. “And you are not a man. It took me a while to work it out, but you let your accent slip, just there,” Roda nodded to himself, “when you cleared your throat.”

There was a noticeable change in the mood after that. Both Time Lord and soldier knew that the other was hiding something, but as they stared each other down, clearly deep in thought, they seemed to come to some kind of accord. Roda, for his part, was trying to figure out the mystery (and was having one of those rare moments where he understood the Seeker’s thirst for understanding). When the stranger had first run into the TARDIS, it had seemed like a mistake, but Roda had realised pretty quickly that the average human from the 1800s wasn’t going to walk inside a tree, let alone be able to see that there was a door in it. That had led to the obvious conclusion that the man - woman - had travelled with the Doctor at some point, or at least met him, but if he had, they would have been looking for a police box. But they knew the Doctor. So who - or what - were they?

Roda was the first to break the uneasy silence, making certain to lean over and make sure that the perception filter on the TARDIS was up and running. He had questions - not only to find out who the stranger was but also to make sure that they _weren’t_ a threat. This was no time for Roda to let down his guard, especially with the data stick still in his back pocket! - and he suspected that to get them, he would have to be forthcoming with at least some answers. They didn’t necessarily have to be truthful ones. That remained to be seen.

“How long has the battle been going on for?”

That stopped the soldier in her tracks again; it clearly hadn’t been the question they’d been expecting, and until he’d asked it, Roda wasn’t sure he’d expected it either. The soldier looked up at the roof of the TARDIS, as if trying to remember, but the loud, rumbling of their stomach betrayed them.

“Half a day?” She ran a hand through her tied-back ponytail, tugging it loose, and Roda’s suspicions were confirmed. It was definitely a woman, and a young one, at that. It was probably easy to make their voice sound like a man of their age, and with a little gunpowder on their jaw and the effort made to make sure no one looked at them too closely. Roda had done it herself enough times, but never for as long as this woman had surely been doing it. They’d have had to sign up in England, and travel all the way from there to Spain, let alone keep it up in an army made up entirely of men and soldier’s wives. (Perhaps, reasoned Roda, they’d helped. He’d spent a few nights with a soldier himself, in a much younger regeneration, and the families that travelled with the army had been nothing if not welcoming.) “The Frogs attacked the Spanish this morning. We’ve been trying to hold the hill all day, they told us there was a ceasefire but…”

“But then the cannons started.”

The woman nodded, and Roda sighed. He knew that tone of voice, had used it himself enough times during the Time War and even while working for Torchwood. It was exhaustion, not from tiredness - although that was a part of it - but the sort that came from knowing that this wasn’t your final battle. Whoever this woman was, whatever had made her sensitive to the TARDIS landing, she had clearly subconsciously seen it as a way to get away from it all… and Roda had genuinely considered spiking the tea he was about to offer her with retcon.

“Come on.” Roda’s tone of voice softened, and he realised that he couldn’t help himself. He understood the woman. Her abruptness, the knee jerk response to pull a gun on a stranger who seemed like a threat. (Hadn’t he done that himself plenty of times? His revolver, his bow, hundreds of weapons across the centuries…) The weariness. The woman seemed far older than she looked, and though this close, Roda could hear the woman’s single heartbeat it didn’t change the fact that the TARDIS had clearly wanted him to be here. And the TARDIS didn’t often lead him astray. “The battle can do without one soldier.”

“But-”

“No buts. You’re going to sit down, have a cup of tea, and tell me why you thought I was the Doctor.”

The soldier’s walls went up yet again. Roda stored that piece of information away for later; what in Gallifrey’s name had she said to put the woman’s hackles up in that familiar way?

“So you _do_ know him.”

“It’s a long story.” Roda’s eyes darkened as he turned towards the branching corridors that would lead to the kitchen. “You don’t want to hear it.”

“Trust me,” the woman followed behind, her voice low and bitter, but she was following. She was taking Roda’s olive branch, at least for now. “Mine’s longer…”

“Oh,” Roda smirked, turning to cast his gaze distinctly downwards. “I wouldn’t be so sure about _that_.”


	3. Immortals 3/4

**THE REDJAY'S TARDIS - WHENEVER, WHEREVER**

Me - as, with some cajoling and raised eyebrows, Roda learned the soldier called themself - was like nothing he had ever seen before. It had been hard to filter the truth from the fiction - Me certainly wasn’t a real name, to begin with, but given how long Roda had gone by the name Redjay he could hardly talk - but in a way it was the lies that told Roda what he needed to know. Me wasn’t a time traveller, but she did know about time travel. She had reacted to the Time Agency, and though Roda couldn’t be sure she’d met the Doctor, she at least knew who he was. That posed a problem, and the possibility of wiping Me’s memory remained at the back of Roda’s mind as he slowly coaxed more information out of the woman who was, and wasn’t, a redcoat.

He’d expected to have to lie through his teeth about who he was and what he was doing in the Peninsular War but at least at first, it had been difficult to get a word in edgeways even to ask questions. Me talked with the certainty of someone who had practiced their lies. They spoke about their home back in Bradford, in Yorkshire, but not as though it was their first; even if they claimed it was. And then there were the inaccuracies, in the details, where the veneer began to wear thin. Places she had gone for a drink, men she had been with. Things that it was difficult to fake with conviction.

Why did she talk about the whiskey rebellion - when Roda had opted for a bottle of aged, okay something-or-other instead of tea - as though she had been there? By her own admission, she would only have been fifteen. And why, when she was in Spain, did she miss frytour blaunched, an almond dish that hadn’t been popular since five centuries before she was born? Was she an immortal? If she was, she was nothing like Jack… but he couldn’t get a single read off Me that made her out to be anything other than human.

Roda kept the drinks flowing - certain that he could drink any human under the table and satisfied that it would loosen Me’s tongue and not his, until the conversation began to turn dark.

“I had a friend… long time ago now,” began Me, raising her glass of what Roda had worked out was a thirty-something century hyper-whiskey, “who would have loved this.”

“Oh?”

Roda took a long swig of his own drink, resting his elbows on the table. So far, at least, Me seemed… harmless. Secretive, but harmless. She wasn’t malicious and she hadn’t seen the Doctor in years. Roda’s secrets, so long as he continued to evade giving his own name, were probably safe. So what was he meant to do with her? He couldn’t just drop his new friend - if that’s what they were; right now, he couldn’t afford friends - back in the middle of the warzone but then if he didn’t, Me would be branded a deserter. But he couldn’t very well take her with him, either. He wasn’t the Doctor; he didn’t travel with companions, and never had.  
Me, words slightly slurred, kept talking, oblivious to Roda’s dilemma. “Aye. Sam Swift, he called himself. Bit of a rogue,” Roda couldn’t help but smirk, “and a drunk, but we travelled together for a long time.”

“What happened to him?” Roda prompted, hoping for some elaboration on ‘travel’.

“He died.”

“...ah.”

Me emptied her glass, and rocked back on her chair, staring at the ceiling. “They all die.”

Me suddenly looked very, very small. Lonely. Roda sighed, before he could stop himself, before reaching across the table to take away what was left of Me’s. She began to protest, but Roda put up a hand and raised a warning eyebrow. He downed first his own hyper-whiskey, and then Me’s.

“But you don’t.” Roda cut to the chase, still leaning over the table, stretched so far he was almost on his toes. Me stared at him like he had suddenly grown a second head, stammering for the first time.

“I - no! That’s ridiculous.” She folded her arms defensively. “People die in wars. That’s normal.”

“And people die from accidents, or old age,” persisted Roda, “or because someone stabs them and pushes them out a window. But you,” he prodded Me in the chest, “don’t.”

She narrowed her eyes, glaring at him. “Why do you care so much?”

Roda pretended to ignore her. “And you push people away,” he continued, not breaking eye contact, “because you think it won’t hurt if you don’t let them get close. But it does. So now you’re hurting, and you’re lonely.”

“You think I don’t know that? Shut up or I’ll-”

“You need people,” Roda argued. “Whether you like it or not. Just because you’re immortal-”

“I’m not-”

“You’re a bad liar. Well,” Roda pursed his lips. “You’re not as good a liar as me. So listen.”

If pressed, Roda wouldn’t have been able to say what had come over him. He didn’t know himself well enough, yet. Wiping Me’s memory was out of the question, he realised. He would have to trust that Me would realise he had his secrets as much as she had hers, and be willing to guard them. Apparently, lying low was going to be harder than he’d first thought. And here Roda had always thought the Seeker was the one who was too clever for his own good. Fake your death, all you have to do is disappear. You’re good at that. Roda snorted, and then softened his tone, though his eyes remained steely.

“My…” he paused. What was the right word? “Lover,” he settled on, “is immortal.” Me’s head snapped up at that, her eyes widening in shock. It seemed to sober her a little, and Roda took advantage of the shock. “He doesn’t push people away, he makes the most of them. While they’re there.”

Me sneered. “What’s the point in getting attached?” She tried to reach around Roda for the bottle of hyper-whiskey, but Roda forcefully pushed his arm away, pinning his wrist almost intimately. There was a brief struggle before Me went limp, if not submissive. “I can’t settle down, have a nice family.” The bitterness in Me’s voice was impossible to miss. “I tried. But I outlive everyone, or they get ill and I don’t, or they get hurt because of me. Nothing lasts,” her shoulders slumped, “it’s easier to be alone.”

“Right,” huffed Roda. “That’s why you’re talking to me right now.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like you’re doing any better!” Despite himself, Roda recoiled. “You and the Doctor, in your flying boxes. The Doctor has friends. Travelling companions. What about you?” Her words cut into Roda, and he let his grip on her wrist slacken. Both of them slumped back into their seats on opposite sides of the table. “It’s just you in your box, isn’t it? You’re alone.” She smiled, but it wasn’t happy. It wasn’t exactly cruel either, but Roda could feel it was meant to cut. “Just like me.”

“I have friends.” It was petty, defensive. Roda’s fingers ghosted automatically to the vortex manipulator on one wrist, and the leather bracelet on the other, restless under the table. 

“Then why aren’t you ‘making the most’ of them?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Is it, though?” Me stayed in her chair, every part the picture of relaxed, but Rod knew that trick well. She was tensed like a cat, or a predator, lazy to the untrained eye but ready to move at a moment’s notice. It was hard to know what was going through the woman’s mind at the moment… not least of all because Roda could feel his temper - no, not temper, indignation - rising. “Or do you just tell yourself that so you can sleep at night.”

“You don’t know me.” The tables turned, Roda became defensive, restless.

“And you don’t know me,” countered the strange immortal. “So let’s stop fucking pretending we do.” Me made to stand, but her legs wobbled and in the end, as Roda jumped to his feet, she wound up leaning faux-casually on the arm of her chair. After a moment’s pause, brushing Roda away, she spun around, looking around for the door.

“Look,” Roda ran a hand through his hair, at a loss. He shouldn’t have taken her with him, he shouldn’t have interfered. He shouldn’t have assumed he could have a few hours of companionsh-

“Take me with you.”

“...what?”

It was the last thing he’d expected to hear.

“Take me with you. Don’t make me live like this.” Me was resolute, but Roda couldn’t tell if it was the alcohol speaking or the woman. He ran his hand through his hair again and rubbed his jaw, gears working in his head as he frantically sought a solution for a situation that had gotten out of hand. “Not like the Doctor did.”

“I… can’t.”

“I don’t belong,” begged Me, having found the doorway and now holding onto the frame for support. “Everyone dies. I don’t. Even Time Lords die,” she glared at Roda, “but if the Doctor had taken responsibility for his mistake,” Roda raised an eyebrow, startled by the statement, “I wouldn’t be alone.”

It was… almost tempting to say yes. The anger began to seep way. If Me stayed with him, she wouldn’t be able to talk to the Doctor about him. Neither of them would be alone. Roda would have someone else to help them with their plans, a second pair of hands… but he would be leading Me to their death, at best. At worst, when the plan was over he would be gone, and she would be trapped on a hostile planet with no allies and a lot of angry eyes on her. And until Roda was done… Me would be a prisoner. There would be no leaving. He couldn’t risk any news of his survival reaching… well, anyone. Maybe that was what Me wanted now, but hitching a ride was a one-way ticket with no escape routes… Even if Roda wanted someone else around (which… he didn’t. Of course) there was no way it would work.

“...let me sleep on it.” The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them, escaping like smoke. Me perked up, hope flashing in her tired eyes. “We’ve both drank too much. Lost our tempers. I have a spare room. You can sleep off…” he gestured weakly at Me, “all of this, get a good night’s sleep not on a bedroll in a field.”

“Thank you.”

Roda shook his head, hearts knotting in his chest. “I’m not making any promises. A good night’s rest. That’s all.”

“It’s a start.” Me grinned, the most honest thing she had done all evening, and Roda’s hearts continued to break. As if they weren’t damaged enough. “And in the morning, you can show me how many arrows you can fire in a minute?”

“Wh-”

“I saw the bow at the door. I can fight,” explained Me, earnestly, letting Roda begin to steer her down the corridors of the TARDIS, searching for whatever bedroom the ship felt like supplying. The lights were low, and red. Warning. The old girl wasn’t happy with her. “I won’t be in the way. I can help you do… whatever you’re doing.” Me stopped them, so suddenly that Roda almost ran into the back of her. “Who am I travelling with, anyway?”

“I’ll tell you later…” Roda half muttered, shepherding Me through a wooden door on the left, into an oddly dimly lit room with wooden walls and a large, sheet-festooned bed. He grinned brightly. “When you’re sober enough to remember, eh? After you sleep.”

“Sure... sure…” The hyper-whiskey, and hope, had made Me more acquiescent. “Nice room. Bit medieval.” She looked Roda up and down. “Thought you Time Lords were from the future?”

“We get about,” Roda shrugged, plonking Me down on the foot of the bed and lifting a glass of water the TARDIS had thoughtfully provided. By the time he turned around again Me was half pulling her shirt off, not caring at all for what or how much Roda saw, and for a moment, it was hard to pull his gaze away. Small, and excited… she looked so much like he had, when he was younger. “Drink this.” He held out the glass with his eyes averted. “Get some sleep, and… think about what I said.”

There was no response. He gave Me a couple of seconds before turning to look at her, head slumped into one hand, fast asleep on the foot of the bed. He sighed, bending at the knee to gently, carefully, scoop her up into his arms and lie her down flat. She stirred, just barely, as he tugged her boots off, dropping them on the floor beside her discarded shirt. He loosened the bandages around her chest enough that they wouldn’t do any damage - those were something he certainly had past experience, back in the day - and tugged the rough, woollen blankets - the TARDIS really had gone with a medieval theme, hadn’t she? He wondered why - up under Me’s chin. 

The Time Lord watched the immortal for a few minutes; her chest rising and falling, a small restless smile on her face. And then he closed his eyes, shutting the door quietly for a moment. He stood there, silently taking everything in, the quietest he had been since his death… and then headed back towards the kitchen. Me would be asleep for a few hours, yet. And there was half a bottle of hyper-whiskey with his name on it.


	4. Immortals 4/4

**TALAVERA de la RAINA - SPAIN, 1809**

Me threw her diary against her pack and laid back, glaring at the top of the tent as though she could burn a hole through it if she tried hard enough.Outside the war carried on, even if the battle was over. It had gone on for three more days, as much as the immortal could make out. Luckily, Me had enough practice pretending she remembered things that she didn’t that she was able to fake being there throughout; the truth, of course, was that the Time Lord who wasn’t the doctor had dropped her back off in Talavera after the battle had ended.

And abandoned her there.

One of the officers had found her on the ground outside the town, propped up against the walls, and had been so surprised to find her alive that he had not, in fact, realised that Private Meale was a woman. It had been easy to pretend that she had hit her head, fighting the French. That the last few hours had been a blur as she’d fought to remain conscious, to hold back the Frogs, the cannonballs flying… for a complete lie, it must have been believable enough, because she had been given something for her head and sent back to her sleeping quarters to recover, instead of being sent to the stocks or shot as a deserter. Either that, or they were too busy to bother with her, amongst the actual wounded soldiers. All Me had was the kind of crashing headache that came from a night in the cups, and a wounded pride.

She had written down everything that she could remember about the Time Lord in her diary. It had begun ‘Time Lords are all bastards’ - which was then scratched out repeatedly - and had ended up what almost resembled a typical entry. She didn’t want to forget him; she wanted to be able to punch him, if they ever met again. But it was difficult to imagine that they ever would. It wasn’t, precisely, that the Time Lord had lied to her… he had been very precise with his words. ‘I’m not promising anything’ still rung in her ears. Mocking her. She was broken… a freak… even the Time Lords didn’t want her. From the way he had spoken, the man clearly had his reasons for leaving her behind (and perhaps, had he done it while Me was awake, there would have been more of a scene) but that didn’t change the fact that it stung.

Everyone died. Everyone left. After the speech he had made, about loved ones and appreciating them… about not being alone… Me had thought this one would be different.

“Time Lords…”


	5. Generations 1/3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Robin Coif belongs to [Snipe_Hunt](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Snipe_Hunt/), and this next arc is gifted to them. This little story has been, gosh, at least five years in the writing. It's cathartic, regenerating your characters when their first lives are tied into such horrible memories. I hope Robin's new face will help you to overcome your past the same way the new Redjay 'verse has helped me.
> 
> As it's main purpose is to introduce Robin, it's gonna be longer than the last arc and may feature a bit of an exposition dump but if you squint, there might also be the beginning of some clues into Roda's future too...

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”  
**― E.E. Cummings**

***

**UNION ST - ABERDEEN, 2015**

_5 MONTHS AFTER DEATH…_

"So let me get this straight."

Roda ran a hand through his hair and scratched his jaw. He was getting some stubble again. Stubble. That was something he’d never had to worry about, before. It still didn’t feel entirely right, no matter what way he looked at it, but he was so bad at remembering to shave that he supposed he was going to have to grow accustomed to having it there. (Of course, there were days when he felt more like a Time Lady, and those were definitely days where he would remember to shave, but today wasn’t one of them; he definitely had other things on his mind than facial hair.) Shaking his head, he studied the young man in front of him, trying to wrap his head around what he’d been told. It wasn’t the strangest thing he’d heard in a long time - there was the minor detail of him having literally been dead a few months ago, for one thing, and the Seeker had gone off gallivanting between dimensions have that sorry affair in the Medusa Cascade, so this didn’t come entirely out of the blue - but it was certainly on the list.

“You’re a half Time Lord. Two hearts, and everything.” He’d checked.

“Yeah. I think? I mean,” the kid gestured wildly with both hands, his movements exaggerated and clumsy. “Dad definitely wasn’t an- an alien, or anything, he worked at the University… I don’t remember, I just sort of… know.”

The kid looked at his feet, almost pouting. He was a skinny little thing, but Roda couldn’t talk. His last regeneration had always been short a few meals after all, hadn’t she? It was only this latest one that had put on a little bit of pudge and some notable muscles. (Not that his past six regenerations hadn’t had muscles. It was kind of hard to stay in practice as a longbowman without strong arms.) Like Roda, the kid in front of him had dark hair, but his was shorter, and much, much straighter. He was dressed in a neat-looking sweater-vest-and-dark-shirt combo, up against Roda’s more flamboyant grey t-shirt and red and blue plaid overshirt combo. It made him seem less sure of himself, as though the kid hadn’t yet come into his own style yet. And then there was the High Gallifreyan scribbled all over his arms in… was that sharpie?

“And you’re from another dimension?”

“I guess? If you say so.” The kid tipped his head, studying Roda from behind his glasses, and Roda realised that he wasn’t the only intrigued person in the TARDIS. Roda was standing rather protectively between his console and the stranger, but the stranger didn’t seem to have any sort of malicious intent. Rather, he seemed fascinated by the TARDIS, as though he’d never seen one before, but he claimed to be a Time Lord. (Roda knew Gallifrey was back, of course. It was why he had faked his own death so spectacularly, and even wiped the memory of his friends to keep his secrets safe. (The guilt would come back to haunt him, eventually, but then he might die again before he could come back to them. But it seemed strange to imagine that there was already a new generation of Time Tots. Then again, the War had killed so many people…) “I mean, I’m not quite sure how I got here, sooo…”

“You just turned up in my TARDIS,” repeated Roda, sarcastically, “and you don’t know how you got here?”

“I don’t even know what a TARDIS is.”

“You’re standing in one.” Roda narrowed his eyes, even more suspicious, and yet, intrigued. Curiosity killed the cat, but then this cat still had four of his twelve lives. He really couldn’t help himself. The Seeker had always said it was one of his biggest failings; the way that he couldn’t leave well enough alone. (Which was rather ironic, what with him calling himself ‘the Seeker’ and everything. He went on about something called MBTI and ISFPs and other acronyms like that and Roda had sort of switched her brain off. “This is a TARDIS. Time and uh…” Rassilon’s balls, he hadn’t been in the Prydonian Academy for years. “Time and Something Dimensions in Space. Relative? Dunno.” He shook his head again, gesturing almost aggressively with one hand, making the kid jump. “Anyway, the TARDIS says you’re not from around here, and I trust her. And here’s the kicker.” He folded his arms across his chest and rested his chin in one palm. “You’re lost in another dimension, you’ve never heard of Time Lords and yet you are one, and you think some woman called the Redjay might actually be your mother?”

“It probably sounds insane.”

“Yeah,” Roda coughed, raising an eyebrow and feigning a deep fascination with the console of his TARDIS. Which, thank you very much, had seen fit to let someone randomly teleport into the middle of the console room. It really was being bratty, still. Probably still sulking about the whole literally-temporarily-dying thing. At least it hadn’t sent him to the middle of a cannonade this time, but he had been on his way somewhere else when she had made a fuss and dropped him in Aberdeen. He would have to have a word with the old girl about all the detours. He was the pilot, after all. “Totally insane. I mean, who would call himself The Redjay?”

The kid gave Roda a strange look, as though he figured he was insane, as well. Roda couldn’t exactly blame him. This had to be a bit of a strange experience for him. If he was telling the truth, and he wasn’t here on purpose, then how exactly had he just turned up in the TARDIS like this? Maybe it was just bad/good timing; after all, Roda’s TARDIS had been particularly insistent about dragging him to these coordinates and exactly this moment, when he’d been trying to surreptitiously get in and out of Cardiff and refuel without Jack noticing. Instead, he was in Aberdeen. It was Talavera all over again; another unnecessary detour, another security risk, another round of pain for all involved and another chance for everything he had to work for to fail when it had barely begun. At yet here he was, ready to contemplate another mind wipe, or worse - another lie.

_“It’s just you in your box, isn’t it? You’re alone.”_

The look on Me’s face when he had left her in Spain had almost been enough to make him change his mind. She had been at peace, hopeful. And he, hypocrite that he was, hasd betrayed that hope in pursuit of… what? A fool’s task? A suicide mission? It was difficult to take his mind off of that decision when the TARDIS was so ready to remind him of his own failings. 

Roda shook his head. There wasn’t time for regrets. If he survived what he planned to do, he could feel sorry for himself then. Speaking of which… he glanced over at the TARDIS, swinging around one of the three monitors hanging from the ceiling to check the date. 2015. Okay. He was in Aberdeen and crossing his own timeline. Good job.

(Didn’t the Sarah Jane Smith that the Doctor was always talking about live in Aberdeen? Or had he just dropped her off there...)

No, maybe the kid was in trouble? Or maybe the TARDIS had just materialised around him, rather than flatten him. Maybe he’d put his coordinates in wrong and shock and exposure to the TARDIS had driven the kid mad. It occurred to Roda that he could easily ask him himself.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Robin.” Of course. Roda resisted the urge to facepalm. If this really was his illegitimate child from another universe - which frankly, seemed too ridiculous to fathom. She had been infertile all her lives, why would this be any different. Of course, the Master had managed it with the Seeker but she wasn’t going to stoop so low as to ask him how he’d gotten around the Pythia’s Curse - of course he would be called Robin. “Robin Coif.”

“As in the… chainmail armour?”

“I dunno,” the kid shrugged, “my Dad was Scottish.”

Roda couldn’t help himself, finally relaxing his guard. “Gotta love the Scottish. I know I do.”

“Yeah…”

There was an adorable blush on the kid’s face, and Roda couldn’t help but chuckle, all the while missing Jack. Jack would have appreciated a comment like that. He waved his hand again.

“What were you doing before you got here?”

“I don’t…”

He seemed lost, confused. Roda noticed at last, as his instincts started to cool down a little bit, that the kid was the furthest thing from a threat possible. He certainly didn’t know who Roda was, anyway, and if he had met some older version of himself in whatever dimension he’d come from it had been one of his female bodies.

Roda wondered if he had regenerated lately. He did seem young, and it wasn’t just in his appearance. And he kept trying to catch a look at his reflection in little pieces of glass and steel on the TARDIS console. It was in the way he held himself, too, and the almost… anxiousness? Perhaps it had been really recent. With a sigh, Roda tried to soften his tone, finally releasing his guard on the console and approaching the kid to study him properly or… whatever it was he planned to do, he wasn’t sure yet. He was careful to hide the revolver tucked into the waistband of his jeans. The kid spoke like a human, not a Time Lord. (Which was good - maybe Roda wouldn’t have to wipe his memory after all.) Seeing a gun would probably scare him more than anything else, and now that Roda looked at his face more closely, he looked almost about ready to cry.

“Let me guess; the last thing you remember a golden light?”

The kid slowly nodded his head. “The… the car headlights, I guess?” Roda kept his mouth shut, just letting him talk. Rassilon, the kid didn’t even know what he was. It was becoming increasingly obvious that no one had taught him about regeneration, or about Time Lords. He’d just been hit by a car and thrust into a crash course - no pun intended - in functional immortality. “One minute I was crossing the road, at the zebra crossing, and my phone started to ring and the next thing - bam.” The kid shuddered imperceptibly, his hand drifting unbidden to his neck, as though there was phantom pain still. “I remember screeching tires, people crowding around me and a lot of swearing. me thinking ‘somebody help me’ and then I was here.” He laughed, but it was obviously forced. “I think this is the first time I’ve been interrogated about a dream in a dream.” There was another pause, and he smile started to falter; his next words were almost a whisper. “This isn’t… heaven, is it? I was dreaming, right?”

“Uh,” Roda cleared his throat. This regeneration of his was a little like the Seeker’s second, though he would never admit it out loud. He had the subtlety of… how had the Seeker put it, a pair of bolt cutters? Something like that, anyway. But why was he here? Why hadn’t he just regenerated in the street? Why had the TARDIS jumped dimensions to answer a dying child’s call for help…? Not that Roda minded, except that after Me, he hadn’t wanted any more… complications. “No. You’re not dreaming.”

“Oh God,” the kid’s tone of voice remained low, his voice strained. Gallifrey, was he gonna cry? “I’m dead.”

“You’re not dead,” Roda ran his hand through his hair again, “you’re standing right in front of me.”

“But I-”

“Does this look like the Pearly Gates to you?”

“No-”

“You’re not dead. I promise.” The kid - Robin. Roda tried to remember to call him Robin - opened his mouth to argue again, and Roda raised his hand with an ‘ah ah, ssh’. “You’re not dead, Robin. You just…” How was he supposed to word this... “Reset.”

“What do you mean, reset?”

Roda took one more look at Robin, weighed up the pros and cons, and then made a decision. Grabbing the kid’s hand, he began to drag him around the console in the direction of the Zero Room. Roda was many things - paranoid was definitely one of them - but he wasn’t about to turn down someone who turned up on his doorstep needing his help.

“Come on, mon amie. I’ll explain on the way.”


	6. Generations 2/3

**THE REDJAY'S TARDIS - WHENEVER, WHEREVER**

“So let me get this straight.”

Robin Coif was not having a good day, and he had the faint suspicion that nothing was ever going to make sense again. He’d woken up this morning, brushed his teeth, packed a small, tug-along suitcase. It had been a bugger to get across London first thing in the morning but manage it he had, and he’d been on a train barely after the sun was up. He’d had a coffee - he didn’t like the taste of the stuff, but he’d not wanted to sleep past his change of train in Inverness - and he’d read some of his astrology textbook. It was a day like any other, right up until he arrived in Aberdeen and began to walk down Union St. It was a quiet day, for the high street, but it was a weekday so the pavement was filled mostly with mothers doing their shopping while the children were at school and businessmen picking up a coffee on Nero or Pret a Manger, if business was good, and it had been easy to navigate his suitcase thrown them with only a couple of filthy looks. He’d crossed the street at the bookstore, just before the bus stop, but there was nothing on the road and so he’d gone to dash across without waiting for the lights to change. From there, it should have just been a half hour bus to Aunt Janet’s…

It should have been a day like any other, but instead, he’d been hit by a car.

It still felt like a dream. The crunching of bones as the car had collided with his side, his suitcase crumpling against him. The smell of burning rubber, almost suffocating him. The strange sensation of flying through the air, all of a sudden, and landing in front of oncoming traffic, their brakes screeching as they stopped in front of him. Losing his breath as he hit the ground with a thud. Everything going dark, very, very dark… and then gold. Beautiful, terrifying gold.

And now he was standing in some sort of crazy spaceship, being looked down on by a complete stranger, and he was shorter and his voice didn’t sound right and oh god this must be what going mad felt like. 

“I’m an alien.”

“Half, yeah. Hold still.”

The stranger thrust a thermometer under Robin’s arm. He wanted to pull away, but he found that he was still in shock. It had all been… a lot to take in. Regenerations, plural, Time Lords, Time Ladies, a Time War whatever that was, alternate dimensions. It sounded like something out of a science fiction. He’d wanted to be an astrologer, damn it. He’d wanted to know what was out there; not just the stars and the planets and the satellites but the things that mankind didn’t know about. Aunt Janet had always told him he couldn’t believe in aliens, he wasn’t a child anymore, but Roda had told him amazing stories, and he’d never thought of her as much of a writer. She had told him about galaxies he couldn’t find in any of his textbooks, and aliens that glowed purple and had butterfly wings and were the most beautiful thing you would ever see, and moons that weren’t quite made of cheese but which grew cheese, as though it was a plant, and she’d told them all to him with the straightest face he’d ever seen. She’d never said any of the stories were real, but then she hadn’t said that they weren’t, either.

And now he was one of those alien things that mankind didn’t know about. Even worse, he had been one all of his life, and everybody had lied to him. Well, maybe Aunt Janet hadn’t lied to him. Aunt Janet was prim and proper and watched Strictly Come Dancing and Eastenders and knitted in the evenings. She wasn’t the believing-in-aliens sort, even if she had known. But Roda had lied to him; or at least, she hadn’t told him the truth. She’d just sort of… evaded the questions, he realised now, never giving him a straight answer. In fact, he realised - and he was rather annoyed at himself for refusing to be annoyed at her - he had rather made assumptions, all his life. He’d assumed that she was just his Aunt. He’d assumed that she was human. He’d assumed that he was human, because nobody had never told him otherwise, but then they hadn’t told him he was an alien either.

“And I can’t die?”

“No, not quite,” the stranger withdraw the thermometer, then tossed it onto a counter so roughly it almost shattered.

He grabbed a small torch, ignoring Robin’s stammered protests, and pushed him back down onto the bed he had thrust him onto and pulled out a stethoscope. The man had bustled Robin down a series of strangely-lit metallic corridors before opening the door to a very white room. White lights, white walls, white counter tops. He had to admit, he certainly felt better since they’d arrived in the room, which had to be some kind of medical room. Had the man poisoned him, or drugged him? Was that why he felt better?

“But you have thirteen lives. Twelve, now.”

Robin blinked, jaw dropping. “What, I’m some sort of cat?”

“I told you.” The man snorted, half growling with frustration. Apparently Robin was interrupting his work. “You’re a Time Lord.”

It had all come rushing back to him when the car had hit him. People talked about out of body experiences and your life flashing before your eyes but it was almost as though a dam had burst; a dam that had been holding back all this information about himself that he’d not been able to reach. He’d unconsciously known he was different. Davie and he had so much in common - books, video games, football teams that they supported. The same school, the same hometown, parents (and aunts) about the same age who met up for coffee every now and again - but there’d always been this wall between them that he couldn’t understand. The pictures that he doodled on everything that nobody recognized had been his first clue. He’d always thought they were from the cover of a book, or something he’d seen on television, but either people looked at him like they thought he was weird or they were relatives who cooed and said ‘what a creative boy’. They had always been his little mystery… 

Now he knew what it was. It was an ancient, alien alphabet that he apparently could read? Perfectly? As though he’d been born knowing how to read it, or someone had taught him when he was very young and he’d consciously forgotten? High Gallifreyan, the stranger had called it. Not that he’d told him his name, yet, but he’d had a lot to say about aliens. Almost as much as Roda had, but she’d never mentioned Time Lords or the planet Gallifrey. But he knew her in a new light, too. He’d blurted it all out to the stranger, when he’d demanded to know who Robin was, before he’d had time to think before he spoke. How he suddenly remembered everything. Why he had written the words on his arms. The look on his mother’s face the day he’d been born. What his father, who had died only six months after he was born, had smelled like. The strange nickname his father had called his mother, when Robin was drifting off to sleep. The fact that Aunt Roda… shared that nickname. That had been when the stranger had started to ask questions of his own and gotten out the weird alien scanners, and that had been that.

In fact, it was almost like the man knew more about Robin’s rambling nonsense than he was letting on.

“Is that what you are, then?”

“What?” The stranger blinked, nearly dropping a bottle of iodine he’d absentmindedly picked up. “Uh, yes. How did you-”

“Cause you were reading the writing on my arms.” It sounded silly, but this Robin intrinsically knew, too. It was as though all give of his senses were suddenly on overdrive. The man might have tried to hide it, but Robin had heard him muttering Panic! at the Disco lyrics under his breath, and surely it wasn’t a coincidence. (Just why he’d written song lyrics on his arms in an alien language remained a mystery that Robin thought he would never solve.)

“Was not.”

“Were too.”

“Look,” the man snorted, folding his arms across his chest and looking down at Robin, anger flashing across his face. Robin narrowed his eyes, folding his arms in a perfect mimicry of the stranger, “or you start trusting me. I’m taking a leap of faith here, kid, and there’s a lot of people I don’t want seeing me on Earth.”

“My name’s Robin.” Robin pouted, turning his head away. “And it’d be a lot easier to trust you if you’d tell me your name.”

“It’s… Rohan.”

Robin shot the man a sardonic look. “What, like the Riders of Rohan?”

“Well Tolkein had to get it somewhere, didn’t he?” The man sighed, and shot Robin a serious look. “I’ll tell you what…” He leant in, lowering his voice, and despite himself Robin did too, straining to hear what the stranger had to say. “If I told you my name…”

“Yes?” Robin bit his lip expectantly.

“I would have to kill you.”

As Robin blinked, not quite sure what he was expecting the man - Rohan, he might as well call him Rohan - shot him a cheshire cat grin and returned to the platter full of apparatus behind him. Apparently he wasn’t going to be giving Robin a straight answer any time soon. Well, that was fine. He was an adult and he could look after himself. An adult in a strange universe. An alien adult of a species he knew absolutely nothing about. He suddenly realised that he was entirely at this man’s mercy; he relied on him, completely, to get home safely, to his own universe, and not die. He would have to trust that Rohan wasn’t some weird creepy pedophil or a serial killer. After all, he seemed pretty intent on making sure that Robin was well, that had to stand for something, right? If he was just going to kill him, he wouldn’t care that much… right?

“Well,” as Rohan finished with the stethoscope he’d been casually placing on both sides of Robin’s chest while he mulled over what may or may not have been a threat, “both hearts are beating. You did damn good at regenerating.”

“What do you mean, regenerating?” Robin let his head drop into his hands. “None of this makes any sense…” He just wanted to go home. He’d never wanted to see Aunt Janet’s plastic-coated couches more in his entire life. “My aunt must be worried sick.”

Rohan paused at that, taking a deep breath and looking up at the ceiling. Apparently coming to some sort of decision he let out his breath and paced across the room, placing one palm flat against the wall of the strange building. The lights dimmed at his touch, and Robin was sure he could hear some kind of humming. Maybe even a whispering? Maybe there was a television on somewhere. But Rohan seemed to be listening to the whispering, tilting his head to one side as the bright white light of the room dimmed to something duller, and more manageable, and the overwhelming tingling feeling Robin had been feeling since he’d entered the room began to dissipate. At least one good thing had come of the last half hour. He certainly didn’t feel like he’d been hit by a bus.

At last Rohan seemed content with… whatever he was doing, and he turned to face Robin with a smile that seemed far more genuine, if a little more strained, than any emotion he’d shown since they met. He almost seemed nervous, but that couldn’t be right, could it?

“I have some books.” Rohan scowled. “Less than I did have but I can’t get onto the Seeker’s planet to fetch the others…”

“Sorry, planet?”

As usual, Rohan ignored him. “I have Gallifreyan History 101 lying around somewhere,” for a second his smile faltered, replaced by something bitter, but the moment passed almost as quickly as it happened, “you can read that on the way.”

“On the way to where?”

Was Rohan finally agreeing to take him home, back to Aberdeen? Robin’s heart - hearts? - soared, but his elation was short lived. As the door to the strange white room slid open and Rohan began to saunter through it, he paused in the doorway and shot Robin a wicked grin.

“Why, to break someone out of prison, of course!”


End file.
